Unusual & Exotic Plants Blog - Urban Jungle and gardening news: October 2009

On a recent visit to a friend’s nursery we laughed to hear their young son, on the cusp of reaching those dreaded teenage years, moodily describe his parents’ nursery’s plants as ‘dingy’. They are expertly grown and the nursery is well laid out and orderly. They also have well-stocked gardens and display borders. He did however have a point. They specialize in hardy herbaceous and deciduous shrubs. Their season was well and truly over and very little green foliage or flowers remained. For me it seemed a bit depressing.

You know – it doesn’t have to be this way. I can’t help but be constantly amazed at how the English are still stuck in this Cottage Garden mentality time warp. There is such an amazing availability of hardy, evergreen, flowering, exotic-looking plants it beggars belief that gardeners would choose to adorn their garden with anything else. All gardening styles have their merits and traditional herbaceous planting schemes I will begrudgingly acknowledge can look amazing for a few weeks of the year but is this good enough? Not for me it isn’t.

We are half way through October and the vast majority of the plants at Urban Jungle are still looking lush. Obviously the bamboo, palms, phormiums, cordylines, pittosporums, yuccas and agaves, to mention just a few, will show off all year round but to be able to extend the season with the amazing flower power of plants, now at our disposal is thrilling. Here are just a few still strutting their stuff at Urban Jungle on this chilly, windy day.

Canna Ehamannii